Review: Face2Face makes Apple Mail more personable

At a Glance

This plug-in for Apple Mail can automatically get profile pictures via social networking sites for contacts.

Sometimes it helps to put a face to a message. If email has felt a little impersonal over the last couple of decades, ChungwaSoft would like to help with its Face2Face 1.1 plugin for OS X’s Mail application.

On its own, Mail will display a contact’s image next to messages they send you, but that’s only if you go through the ardurous process of manually adding those images to Mail in the first place. Once you install the Face2Face plugin, it can automatically show images for many of your contacts by checking services like Facebook and Gravatar (the “globally recognized avatar” service that’s popular with WordPress blogs), commenting services, and forums.

As long as Face2Face can match the sender’s email address with an image from one of these services, you’ll see these images appear next to messages in the default view, and in the header on individual messages if you opt to use Mail’s Classic View.

You can also define your own images on a per-address basis that Face2Face will display to other users of the plugin. For example, you can set your best headshot for your work addresses, and let your hair down in the image for your personal address.

Fortunately, Face2Face is a free plugin right now, so it couldn’t hurt to try adding a little more personality to Mail.

David Chartier Contributor, Macworld

David has been covering Apple and how to get the most out of its products since 2005. Now a freelance tech writer, he runs Finer Things in Tech, jots down thoughts at DavidChartier.com, occasionally starts outlining the great American tech novel, and might still get to snowboard Breckenridge one more time.More by David Chartier